The open road, the choice to travel down any path one chooses: this has long been one of the great ways of traveling for any adventurer. Motorhomes, camper vans and trailers let you do this while still keeping some of your comforts from your home.
The idea of traveling with a trailer has been around since the first pioneers in America, although it wasn’t until the 1920s that it really became a popular way of taking vacations.
One great thing about camper vans and motor homes is that there is a model, size or style for every possible kind of traveler. These include everything from small teardrop trailers that can be towed by something as small as a motorcycle to huge motor homes with big-screen TVs and rooftop decks.
There are a few classic vehicles that come to mind when one thinks of a home with wheels. The VW Van is one of the cheapest and most popular vehicles that people around the world have been ether modifying to use as a camper or buying pre-modified ones from Westfalia. VW still makes a camper van called the California, but, despite its name, it’s unfortunately not available in the United States. However, if you still want the charm of the older models you can rent them for road trips around California or England.
Truck Campers are another classic way to bring along a home with you. Although usually not the most attractive campers, they do offer a lot of practicality. If you already own a pick-up truck, which with the Ford F-150 and Chevrolet Silverado still being the best-selling vehicles in the United States might be likely, then all you need to do is attach a Truck Camper to it whenever you want to travel, and then take it off when you need to go back to day-to-day usage.
Huge motor homes like the Airstream Skydeck, that are based on bus frames, let you really bring all the luxuries one might have at home along with on the road. The Skydeck comes with everything from a full-sized bed, shower, dinning room, HD satellite TV and a rooftop deck that can seat 15 people. The downsides to motor homes this big are their size, which might limit the roads you can drive on and places you can go, and how expensive they are: most full-sized motorhomes cost well over $100,000.
The classic aluminum bullet-shaped Airstream trailer is an icon in the design world, and it’s great that Airstream is still making them and even improving them with new innovative models that still stay true to the original. The smaller models, such as the pictured DWR (Design Within Reach) Airstream and the Airstream Basecamp, offer nice sized-down versions of the original, but still maintain the great looks and comforts of the classic bigger Airstreams.
Some other interesting motor homes are the rugged Unicat Vehicles that can be used in all terrains and are often seen following desert races such as the Paris-Dakar, or during scientific explorations in the Arctic. Although they don’t look great on the outside, they actually have attractive modern interiors.
In the end, a vehicle you travel in really ends up being about how you use it and where you go with it. Probably one of the best examples of this is the cool, two-story transforming minivan that three friends built in Japan so they could then travel across the country.
- Elijah Wallechinsky
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